


Fred2 Tumblr Fics

by DrGaybelGideon



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 13:28:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7894408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrGaybelGideon/pseuds/DrGaybelGideon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AUs, pwp, you want it it's here!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. When In Rome

Frederick Chilton, Freddie decides, is a weed. Unlikable. Unkillable. Springs up in inappropriate place- she’s not going to continue that thought- and apparently thrives better in hydration and direct sunlight.  
She does not. As last night’s “hydration” consisted of wine older than her, the sunlight is far more unpleasant than normal, impressive, given after three days of sunburn she doubted she could hate it more.  
Frederick’s either not hungover- impossible, unless of course Gideon’s pre-surgery bitching about Frederick being an alcoholic had some basis in fact- or the sunlight’s not penetrating his non-blind eye enough to trigger a headache.  
Either way, he’s cheerful and lively enough for Freddie to consider throwing him in a canal.  
  
“Gelato?” He smiles, a gesture she’s certain she’s only imagining as a grin until she blinks again. “Gela-no, I take it.” He is smirking, the obnoxious little toad, amused by both her suffering and his own terrible puns.  
“That hurt.” A statement true to both the joke and her head which seems to amuse him even more.  
“Coming from the Pulitzer nominee who referred to two of my patients as the ‘Chesapeake Rip-Offs’?” If Frederick hadn’t had the sense to refer to her recent, still treasured achievement- apparently the public’s reaction to the horror’s of Hannibal’s final crimes was acclaim rather than the horror it deserved- she swears he would be swimming by now.  
“Shut up, ‘Hannibal The Cannibal’ coming to shelves 2016.”  
“One dollar, please.” He’s grinning annoyingly enough for her to land a low blow and smile her sweetest smile back.  
“Seeing as we’re co-writing it-” Frederick’s grin fades slightly. She’s writing it, hopefully making the phrases in it so obviously her style that if Frederick attempts to take full credit she can sue him for fraud. “-I would really reccommend being a little nicer to the brains of the operation in case the release date gets pushed back to 2025.”  
He’s going to play the ‘wallet of the operation’ card now, remind her he’s financing both her writing and this little venture, everything from the hotels they stay in to the food on the table, and the overpriced wine that’s hurting her so much today.  
“As I’m paying you by the page, not daily, take as long as you need. I’m not going to lie and say I don’t like the company.” Frederick kisses her without warning, steals a kiss the way he sometimes does on his more mischeivious days.  
Used to at least. This is the first time since-  
Well.  
He seems to realise it as well, pulling back to cover his cheek on instinct, a sudden change to the small shadow Frederick, a little ghost wrapped in bandages that she brought home from the hospital.  
  
She could kiss him at this moment, but he’s odd like this, doesn’t believe the meaning in her touches when she presses lips to his rarely-still mouth. She still hasn’t seen the full extent of his injuries, the thought’s an unsettling one, he’ll whisk her across the world but still not trust her enough to see him vulnerable.  
  
So she doesn’t. She fishes for her purse instead, ignoring his flinch, and squints at the bar behind them.  
“Will the airline take us to Florence if we’re trashed?” Frederick’s hand lowers to take her purse in answer to her question, a small easy smile crossing his face as he brushes lips over her fingers. He seems to worry about that too, until she flicks him, causing a yelp as fingernails connect with the end of his- well- Roman nose.  
“Only one way to find out…”


	2. About Time

Freddie Lounds is an impatient woman both in nature and trade. Exclusive stories in journalism are only exclusive to the first person at the crime scene, and given the amount of times her entanglements with Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham have led to her being soaked in blood and inches from death she’s learned to be quick on her feet.  
  
They’re tapping now, she notices. Not boredom, anticipation, the same tripwire-taut line that’s been tying her here for over 13 months tying her twitching heels to the floor as she waits for the surgeon to re-emerge.  
The thought that she didn’t even wait this long for her own birth brings something between a wry smile and a grimace to her face as she flickers through magazines as void of any nutritional value as their glossy cover stars, because she shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t, the man will get his hopes up and she’ll dash them again, and it was easier to be the wicked witch before Frederick Chilton lost his skin.  
She’s not-  
  
Of course she can. Freddie Lounds, professional psychopath, she reminds herself, has broken his heart before and felt no guilt about the proceedings.  
The quick sweaty fumbles before all this were easy, his place not hers because the air of loneliness the man gave off would linger around the house far longer than he himself would, information gained phone calls ignored job done.  
Until of course the next time they met. The glances that should have been awkward replaced with ones of barely concealed terror, holding a ventilation bag and making overly loud small talk with a one night stand and she swears she could kill Gideon for his intervention if Hannibal hadn’t saved her the trouble.  
She managed, though, abandoned him at the hospital and went home to shower, ignored the missed phone calls and the requests for soup.  
  
And then a carrot and coriander broth, three weeks after a bullet smashed in Frederick Chilton’s upper jaw. Coffee, black. Dry small talk about how everyone has some degree of facial asymmetary and the small hint of a smile from under a face full of bandages.  
  
And now this. 13 months of watching the cinder block that talked with his words slowly start to resemble a human being again, skin slowly sewn back together in different pieces like haberdashery on a torn leather coat.   
He’s still missing eyelashes, tufts of hair, but his body’s more or less intact: a resemblence to a ragdoll everyone finds far preferable to raw steak.  
She says ‘everyone’, the broken narcissist probably disagrees, and he’s right to.  
  
She should run. Follow her toes to the nearest exit, compartmentalise chocolates and dinners and an unusual day spent lazing around watching television, teenagers with hangovers still despite their age. Forget about it, she’s done it before, it makes more sense.  
But she’s had 13 months of painstaking sewing to decide whether or not to run, and she’s stubborn.  
  
“The surgery was a success.”  
  
It’s wet, when it finally happens three days later, wet and sloppy, because Frederick Chilton hasn’t had to work lips at all over the course of a year and he’s lost all strength in them, a stroke patient’s motor control on both sides of his new mouth. It’s not a great kiss by any means, a great cue for the chorus of doubts to strike up in the back of her mind. Frederick’s crying on her, possibly pain, more likely emotion, the hands half-crushing hers are symptoms of either diagnosis and she’s only interested in the answer because the man may need more morphine.  
It’s emotion, of course it is, the green patchy-lashed eyes locked on hers until they close are wildly expressive as always, grief, joy, a number of emotions she can’t be bothered to list.  
She probably does deserve more. Frederick’s taken a year of her life, forced her to wait around in hospitals and read the same magazines until her eyes glaze over at the mere memory of them, made something stir in her stomach that feels unsettlingly like caring and that’s the part she resents, the part she wants an irrational vengance for.  
She’ll get her pound of flesh some time in the next few years, she promises herself, tracing the sapphire in the middle of smaller stones on her finger and placing her other hand on Frederick’s sob-shaking head. They’ve got the rest of his life to try.


	3. An Unexpected Intrusion

Freddie’s torn, once she manages to work out the origins of the two distinct noises the door’s slightly muffling, between laughing and storming in to slap him.  
Frederick’s moaning, letting out the long throaty sounds it normally takes her around ten minutes to coax out of him freely without her around.  
She imagines the second noise has quite a lot to do with that.  
“Frederick!” She decides she’ll indulge herself, storm in and snarl at him for invading her privacy- which he has- doesn’t exactly expect the inhumanly high screech of shock as he falls off the bed backwards, visibly hard for the brief semi-second before he disappears behind the frame. “What do you think you’re doing in my drawers?”  
The too-loud hum of her vibrator even through the door answered her question a long time ago, the rattling of it on the wood floor making it impossible for Frederick to lie and claim it’s something ridiculous like an electric toothbrush.  
Apparently he reaches the same conclusion: his head appears over the top of the mattress, red from what she disgustedly imagines is exertion.  
“You were- you gave me a key.”  
“Excuse me?” This is unusual. Frederick’s king of bad excuses, but at least they’re always given well. There’s none of the man’s usual cocksure posturing, no deliberate attempts to provoke now, he’s genuinely embarrassed as he sets her largest vibrator down on her bed and reaches for the discarded briefs on the end of the headboard, reemerging in coverings that do absolutely nothing to disguise the slightly leaking evidence of his arousal from her eyes.  
Freddie considers.  
Frederick’s a disgusting little slimeball, but he’s never particularly tried to keep that side of himself hidden from her.  
“I was expecting two hours of privacy, Miss Lounds.” He must really be in a state if he’s using her title, shuffling towards the bathroom and covering as much of himself as he can manage once he’s finally figured out how to switch it off-  
“Frederick, did you just put my vibrator up your ass?!”  
The accusation’s obviously such a shocking one, true or not, that the man spins around to stare at her, accidentally stumbling over his foot and cracking into the bottom of the bed with a sharp cry as he hits the floor.  
“N-” She’s by his side when he can’t manage the next letter, slightly concerned by the out of focus motons of one dazed eye. And then Frederick scowls, folding his arms before uncrossing them to try and get to his feet. “No! No I did not put that damn thing in me, if you must know, I was-” The anger in his tone fades as the flush in his face rises, forcing him to pull his wrist out of a clutching hand before pausing, red in her bathroom doorframe.  
“Were you planning on it, Doctor Chilton?” It’s manipulation, coldblooded and blatant. Frederick can never resist his- arguably- proper title, and tilts his own head a little further away as he grasps at the straws of denial just a little too far out of his reach.  
“No.” Frederick replies, crimson and now perfectly aware they both know he’s lying.  
  
“So what?” There’s blood in the water so she closes in, deliberately taking a few more steps into his personal space, predatory as she reaches out and snakes a slim hand into his briefs. “Bisexual?” A murmured guess into his jugular once his gasp has stopped, marveling at exactly how much heat Frederick’s skin’s giving off as her fingers shift a little lower. She’s very interested now, wants to see if Frederick still denies it, the same stubborn pride that got him vivisected or whether he’s learned from his mistakes, whether he’ll bother confessing so something she’s already certain of. “Straight with added assplay?” That’s her next target, shifting his scrotum aside to brush the small gap- Frederick bucks forward then, slight alarm in his face a contrast to the arousal that’s now firm against her stomach.  
“First one.” A muttered, fast confession, like he hopes he won’t be heard. Shame?  
“Bisexual.” She repeats, relishing the little embarrassed twitch of a nod he grants her as he presses back hopefully against her fingers. She’s not going to use her fingers on him, too unhygienic, not something she’s comfortable with, but she’s not exactly going to let this little goldmine of information go unexplored, so toys, moves her fingers back to gently rub his shaft. “On the bed.”  
  
It’s an order once Frederick’s managed to swallow his small gulp that he obeys eagerly. Splaying his thighs. Flushing. Closing them a little, peeling forgotten underwear off before nervously parting them again.  
It’s pornographic. Which is exactly what this was going to be anyway, but combining Frederick’s wide-eyed visual stimulus with the moans she knows will end up tearing themselves from his throat in moments makes a dark, uncharacteristic flush creep across her face.  
“Touch yourself.” A familiar order, obeyed with a familiar obedience and a soft moan as Frederick gently runs the flat of his palm up the underside and curls his fingers around halfway up. Starting gently to make himself last. The idea’s thrilling enough for her to drape over him and murmur a correction into his ear rather than just ordering from a distance, an idea apparently exciting enough for him to involuntarily thrust into her stomach.  
“Freddie-” A startled warning and a deliciously radiant blush before the look in her eyes persuades him.  
He doesn’t meet them as his fingers edge further back, brushing and stroking at his entrance with the same sort of intensity he did his cock with a much lower moan than normal, spell broken by her gaze as he moves his fingers hurriedly away.  
“It’s not something I do around partners!” Frederick exhales, mortification clear in his tone she’s not letting him get away with.  
“I’m sure you did it for boyfriends. Opened yourself up like this.” It’s her bedroom drawl, the tone of voice she’s sure the man has a Pavlovian response to by now, her not so secret weapon that’s working already. “Lay on a bed and spread your legs for loads of men.”  
“Greedy bisexuals are a lazy Hollywood trope, Freddie.” He’s annoyed now. Grumpy. Perhaps Frederick really did only have one or two male partners, something the more imaginative side of her brain’s a little disappointed about.  
“I am.” A verbally shrugged confession that both Frederick’s eyes and cock seem to visibly grow with shock at, a moment without protest she takes to hand him the lube. “Get on with it.”  
  
She’s made to look away for a little while, perfectly aware of the actual moment of penetration by the small pain-pleasure hiss of the man behind her, the small breath-released moan seconds after. She can tell from other noises too, small slick ones increasing in speed as his fingers move in and out of him a little faster once, moans falling a little more freely from his throat as he picks up the pace.  
Freddie peaks. Enjoys the sight of Frederick’s lip between his teeth as he pushes his body down onto fingers that can’t possibly go any further in, well up to the knuckles before the pace stammers.  
“Don’t look!” He protests with something embarrasingly like a squeak, voice high from overexertion and she can tell from the precome streaking his stomach, arousal.  
“You’re gorgeous.” She replies truthfully, because Frederick’s near-edible like this; flushed and sweating, vague slivered outline of the bottom of his scar visible under his ever-present shirt and a truly corrupting look of carried-away embarrasment on his face. And then she’s stepping forward with it in her hand just to see the conflict of hunger and terror on his face.  
“Please.” Hunger wins, apparently, and she nods. The man’s positioned himself with a pillow under his hips for easier access, endearingly helpful in his new haste to have her vibrator- her- inside of him, and Freddie feels an uncharacteristic amount of jealousy for any man who’s ever felt the warmth of his insides. Not in a Gideon way, she corrects herself. Unless- well. There’s a thought.  
  
Frederick stops being helpful the moment she stops the slow movements in and out of him and clicks the button at the end, genuinely frightened for a moment as Frederick arches with a scream. But it’s a pleasured one, she realises quickly, accompanied by babbling in English and a foreign language- Spanish?- she didn’t know he could speak and desperate rolls of hips down onto it. He’s desperate, something she’s far too aroused by, taking well under a moment of the vibrations against his prostate before he’s pleading and thrusting into midair.  
“No.” She warns, forcing one trembling knee to the side in a move which of course arouses him more, because Frederick likes being out of control. “Did I say you could do this?” She’s ignored, pissing her off far more than it should in theory, but it’s her toy, and she should be setting the pace. “Stop it or I’ll tie you up!”  
She’s been planning that for a while actually, expose the poor man and suck on that ever-tempting stomach scar for a little while whilst running a hand up and down him.  
  
The circumstances of the stomach scar are probably what make him freeze.  
  
He’s still and quiet for a moment, silent staring into her face an odd contrast to the rattling still audible from inside his body and the small damp noises as his stomach contracts. He’s having flashbacks or small remembered moments, strong enough that he doesn’t seem to register the near-brutal contractions of his stomach as the thing deep in him slowly starts the motions of his orgasm. Not there.  
  
The thought makes her uncomfortable enough to stop it, cutting him off at his peak and waiting, a slow soft rub of hands until he’s back with her, nodding slightly.  
“Thank you.” Frederick nods, still hard if slightly startled as his hands close around hers.  
“Do you want to keep going?” It’s a simple question, responded to with an enthusiastic nod, so Freddie responds the same way, still a little perturbed by the silent staring of five minutes ago as the man seems to shake it off.  
“Could you ride me?” Another question, answered this time by the ever present selection of condoms in the drawer and the look of renewed enthusiasm on Frederick’s face.  
Frederick doesn’t last long, but Freddie doesn’t need him too, soaked and aroused enough by just watching and listening and the ever present sight of her pink silicone protruding from Frederick’s hole that she comes moments after, aided by the man’s gentlemanly movement of fingers in and out of her as she shudders and clenches around them.  
It’s soft after, because she ignores the urge to ask, determined to bask in her afterglow before confronting him about his moment of strange freezing.  
But Frederick’s cuddling her then, burying a nose in her shoulder and a hand temptingly close between her thighs, one finger thoroughly distracting her from her argument.  
“Could we consider embracing the equally lazy bisexual stereotype of a threesome?” A hopeful murmur, and Frederick’s finger rubbing lazy circles into her clit as an attempt at persuasion.


	4. Mute

Renaming the witness protection wifi ‘Hannibal Eats Ass’ in a fit of drunken inspiration doesn’t stop it being any less frustrating to Freddie when it disconnects. The humour’s finally completely drained from its name when the connection shuts down for the fifth time, causing her to finally let out an uncharacteristic scream of frustration. Maybe it’s the universe telling her not to publish articles about the horrors of Hannibal’s house until everyone injured in it is firmly out of the woods. Divine intervention.  
Freddie’s never been religious, so tends to ignore these little signs. It doesn’t stop her swearing and letting out a particularly ugly screech of “God!” when the slight shuffling from behind her’s revealed to belong to a body, a too-thin, wasted one with its face wrapped in bandages. Combine that with the white dressing gown, and for a split second, it’s a mummy, sent to kill her by some ancient Egyptian overlord who really disapproves of her journalism.  
Of course it’s not. It’s Frederick, Frederick ‘arrogance incarnate’ Chilton, who doesn’t really seem to deserve his title any more. He hasn’t been worthy of it since their last meeting, lying with his guts out on a table, but seeing him brought in yesterday, leaning heavily on his cane and jumping at the sight of her was an unfriendly reminder. The fear on his face is less apparent at night, but the sight of him, standing small in open-toed hotel slippers and clutching a whiteboard in one outstretched hand with some dark scribble on it is still unnervingly pathetic.  
“I can’t read that, Frederick.”  
He doesn’t respond. Odd. Normally the man’s impossible to shut up.  
”You could just say it.”  
Except he couldn’t. He’s mute, she realises a day and a half late, the parts of his mouth not concealed by bandages twisted into a frustrated scowl as he takes a few irritated steps forward.  
It’s still indecipherable when it’s angrily held out a foot from her face, doctor’s writing living up to its stereotype as a pair of agitated eyes wait for her to translate. “Still nothing.” Frederick makes a strange, frustrated half-noise as the board passes from one hand to the other and the forefinger he had it pinched in raises to his lips instead.  
Be quiet.  
“Shut up. Right.” There’s a triumphant, familiar nod, a glimpse at his past self before his face contorts with pain. He turns, ignoring her to slink away back to his room, and Freddie wonders whether somewhere Gideon’s laughing at the irony of the only psychiatrist he left the tongue in being unable to speak.  
  
She doesn’t see Frederick for a few days after that, but she hears him: well, by him, she means the constant presence of the army of physiotherapists and speech specialists tending him entering and leaving his room. She assumes it’s either health insurance or, more likely, the FBI’s paying for them all to stop him suing them for compensation. Freddie would accept one then the other and she should tell Frederick to do the same. Plans to whenever she sees him next.  
Which could be never. She hasn’t heard him leave his room in days, but that could be because she tries not to listen too hard to the noises that leak through the cheap plywood nowadays. The feeling of uncomfortable voyeurism became a little too much the moment she realised the small gurgled groans that worried her at night were attempts at speech.  
  
She’s exploiting the FBI printer to print off a first draft of an article to edit- old habits- when they meet next. Frederick startles as she opens the door, blue glow from the little LED panel illuminating the slimmed down bandages on one side of his face. His other eye’s uncovered now, and the other side of his mouth, a single large dressing pad covering the large expanse of the rest of his cheek.  
“Getting better?” His response is an angry look and a hand gesture, one that doesn’t register as shooing until a second later. “I’m waiting for an article?”  
Frederick shoos her again, pouncing, cat-like on the first sheet that the ancient printer rattles out which, predictably, isn’t his. It’s her article- slightly creased now- which he thrusts into her hand forcibly enough for her to stagger backwards as he blocks the printer with his body, panic tinged with embarrassment clear in his face.  
She shouldn’t wait around to see what it is he’s so mortified about being caught printing, but she does, looking under his arms to watch the documents slide out one by one.  
 **YES  
NO  
HELLO  
GOODBYE  
AND**  
They’re words he can form conversations with until his jaw starts working again.  
That’s a lot more… obvious a thing for him to be printing than the porn she was going to taunt him about, and suddenly she’s guilty, sorry for violating the privacy he probably didn’t have in hospital either, and certainly not when he was being processed.  
 **NO** One of the flashcards is held aloft at her in trembling hands. **GOODBYE**  
She retreats quickly after that, preparing for another six days of angry silence from the man who’s supposed to be her neighbour as she debates how he’ll survive if his acid tongue doesn’t get any better.  
  
She’s sat writing her fourth and final draft when a random document replaces it on her screen. Dropbox, she curses once she’s ruled out a virus. She’ll have to turn that off.  
 _Miss Lounds,_  
Kitchen. Apologise.  
Frederick.  
She should have known the promise of an apology was a lure. Frederick was never going to apologise for his own humiliation, and he doesn’t. Frederick’s sat there, patch on a face he’s trying to force into a smile with two large glasses of wine, somewhere between nervousness and determination on his face as he hands her a glass, and in a single fluid motion downs his glass, a tiny trickle of Rosé slipping down from one lip before it’s calmly wiped away, replaced by an enthusiastic if slightly pained smile straight at her. Frederick can drink again, she realises, and is happy about the fact. Expects praise.  
“Well done!” Apparently her feigned enthusiasm sounds as fake as it is, because he scowls, holding up another piece of paper he rummages around the bottom of the pile for.  
 **DON’T PATRONISE ME I AM A DOCTOR**  
An ugly laugh forces its way out of her throat at the thought of that being presented to angry physiotherapists, not dissimilar to the noises Frederick makes more frequently at night now.  
“Of course you have that card.”  
 **OBVIOUSLY**  
Frederick almost manages a smirk to accompany the card, dark amusement in his slightly calmer eyes. Freddie drinks. Freddie smiles. Freddie’s interested enough in this little break from staring at a laptop or into space that she doesn’t break the fingers of the hand that rests on her thigh a few days of being drunk and sociable later.  
  
The bandages are removed, she supposes, around four days after when Frederick doesn’t show up to get drunk with her. The gulping ghastly sobs from his bedroom are her second clue. They stop when she knocks, and feet move towards the door.  
 **LEAVE ME ALONE  
PISS OFF**  
The signs appear one after the other. Freddie decides her Friends marathon, a task that’s taken up quite a lot of her fifty seven days in captivity- sorry, witness protection- is probably a better use of her evening than drinking alone and watches it, more than half distracted by the thought of Frederick’s poor scarred face.  
  
Frederick can actually speak, she finds out two surprisingly lonely days later when she traps him in the tiny bathroom.  
“Frederick, I have seen you literally cut open before, there is nothing-“  
“Nuh!” A snarl replies to her unexpectedly, guttural and sore sounding from where he’s hiding behind the door.  
“If you can speak-“  
“Words!” Another crack of voice, more coherent.  
“Then it can’t be that bad, can it?”  
The taunt, combined with the stress of being trapped in a bathroom works. Frederick opens the door, eyes blazing and face crumpled, a raised red lump with a slightly thicker rim of scar tissue around it protruding from one shattered cheek-  
“Uhgly!” -Or at least that’s what it looks like for the three visible seconds before it’s covered again, bathroom door slammed in her face hard enough for the hinges to creak.  
“It’s not as bad as I’d imagined it being.” Freddie admits honestly. It’s visible, sure, but not as massive as the bandages he was swathed in made it seem, and far less ugly than she’d imagined. Sobs, echoing around the bathroom prove their very different opinions on that matter.  
Freddie sighs.  
“Frederick.”  
“Nu- no.” He tries again, more clearly and more defiantly. She tries a different tactic.  
“Do you know I had acne as a teenager?”  
“Yuracn-” A nonsensical splutter cut off by a small cry of frustration.  
“And that I’ve got a tattoo on my back?” It’s a downright lie, but he’s supposed to respond curiously to it. Ask how she made it disappear so she can dab at his face with concealer. Make it less obvious.  
 **IT WAS YOUR CHOICE TO GET A TATTOO**  
Freddie can’t even begin to imagine why he has that card.  
  
It’s the dead hours of the morning when he tracks along her thought trail, slinking into her bedroom when he’s invited in and sitting, stiff and anxious under her fingers as she runs red lipstick over the raised patch of tissue. Unexpectedly pretty eyes watch her nervously, but he doesn’t protest, stacks of snarky comments and responses left untouched by his side as she paints over the area with too-pale foundation, ghostly in contrast to the rest of his skin. He’s obedient like that, obedient enough not to lean in any further when she arches an eyebrow at him touching her hands, gratitude clear on his slightly flushed face.  
She takes the lead and kisses him, partially curiosity, partially to allay the fear of being unwanted he’s probably felt since the bandages were removed.  
He kisses back eagerly after a stunned moment, slightly sluggish from his tongue’s prior lack of use, but there’s skill there, an interesting and unexpected thought that she considers long after she pulls away.  
“Th- tha-” Frederick lets out a small huff of frustration, but his eyes are hopeful, nervous as they meet hers, and there’s a small hopeful smile on his face.  
She can take advantage of that.  
“If you can say the words ‘thank you, Freddie, take me to dinner’ by tomorrow, I’ll consider it.”


End file.
